Moon Correspondent: Bangladesh Development Bank PLC (BDBPLC) has signed a memorandum of understanding for ‘voluntarily merge’ with state-owned Sonali Bank. This agreement was signed in a meeting held at Bangladesh Bank Board Room Sunday. At that time, along with representatives of Sonali Bank and BDBL, Bangladesh Bank Governor Abdur Rauf Talukder and related officials were present.
After signing this agreement, the assets and liabilities of both the banks will now be reviewed. After that the two banks will be merged after various processes.
The development comes after state-run bank last month got approval from its board to merge with Sonali Bank, the largest bank in the country.
Bangladesh Bank Governor Abdur Rouf Talukder, Sonali Bank Chairman Ziaul Hasan Siddiqui, its Managing Director and CEO Md Afzal Karim and BDBL Chairman Shamima Nargis, and its Managing Director Md Habibur Rahman Gazi were present among others at the event.
Ziaul Hasan Siddiqui said they took the time to scrutinise the agreement thoroughly before signing the deal.
After signing the agreement, BDBL chairman Shamima Nargis said, ‘Out of four indicators of BDBL, only one is in a weak state. That is defaulted loans, which was 41 percent earlier. I brought it down to 34 percent in a year. It is not possible to bring down the rate of defaulted loans from 34 to 5-10 or 15 percent in six months.
BDBL workers have already given an open letter not to merge. Shamima Nargis, the chairman of the company, said that the board of the two banks has decided to merge. They have considered many things and decided, what is good is to be done.
Ziaul Hasan Siddiqui, chairman of Sonali Bank, said, “After much thought, we have decided to merge BDBL. We did not face any pressure, we decided by discussing ourselves. We have two types of experience with both banks. We will move forward using them.
Afzal Karim, Managing Director of Sonali Bank, said that at the moment, his bank’s deposits are 1 lakh 50 thousand crores. On the other hand, BDBL has Tk 3,200 crores, which is about 1/50. The same is the case with loans. So it will not have much impact on Sonali Bank.
Afzal Karim also said, “There is no reason for the officials and employees of BDBL to be alarmed or panicked. We have about 8000 employees shortage, still need a lot of manpower. And BDBL has about 600 employees. They have nothing to worry about.
